An FA (Factory Automation) system includes control target apparatuses and a control apparatus such as a programmable controller that performs predetermined arithmetic processing using states of the control target apparatuses as input data and outputs operation conditions of the control target apparatuses as output data. Communication means are provided in the control apparatus and the control target apparatuses and connected via a network, whereby real-time control is enabled. Specifically, the communication means provided in the control target apparatuses are caused to function as slave stations. The communication means provided in the control apparatus is caused to function as a communication management station that controls data transmission by the slave stations. The communication management station periodically performs processing for receiving data from the slave stations, calculating, using the received data, data for controlling the control target apparatuses, and transmitting the data to the slave stations. In performing the processing, the communication management station controls timing of the data transmission by the slave stations to guarantee real-time properties of the data communication.
A method of estimating performance of the network in such an FA system in which the communication management station and the slave stations are connected via the network is proposed (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). Patent Literature 1 discloses a network configuration managing tool including collecting means for collecting, in an actual network, peculiar information of the slave stations such as IDs and input and output sizes, table creating means for creating, based on the collected peculiar information, a parameter table that is information concerning a network configuration used in a master station, and download means for downloading the created parameter table to the master station. The network configuration managing tool is connected to the FA system. The parameter table is automatically generated by the network configuration managing tool and generated information is registered in the master station.